There are two types of people when it comes to Fay Weldon. Those who love her and those who hate her for “selling out” with The Bulgari Connection.
I’d rather read a carefully plotted novel of revenge and rebirth with the odd mention of a certain posh jeweler than read the celebrity sponsored Twitter feeds of…ohhhh…Charlie Sheen, Kim K, Lindsey Lohan and the rest of them bishes. Fay Weldon is GOD…okay maybe a better term is….She-Devil!
For those of you old enough to remember the late 1980s, you might remember an awful film starring one Miss Rosanne Barr and a slumming Meryl Streep. Plot? Ugly wife has cute accountant hubby stolen by a famous romance writer. Ugly wife vows vengeance and the cheating hubby and his amour get theirs while our ugly heroine builds a better life. Roseanne had a honking mole on her face.
That piece of tripe with a cutesy Hollywood ending was based an stellar novel by one Fay Weldon.
Now Fay Weldon is a master of the social novel. Her writing is razor sharp and captures the struggle between the sexes. Females aren’t always sisters in the Great War. Men can be used and lead astray.
And there is always that special something to elevate one of her novels beyond the norm. You can pick up a Weldon novel decades after it was first published and it still feels fresh and ground breaking.
The titular she-devil of Weldon’s novel is the plain, six foot two Ruth, mother of Nicola and Andy, wife to handsome accountant Bobbo. Yes, there is a grown-ass man called Bobbo. But it’s England. Here in the USA we have dudes called Bubba. Ruth has always considered herself a good wife.
However Bobbo isn’t the ideal husband (because if he was this wouldn’t be a Fay Weldon novel) leaving Ruth for the dainty, blonde romance writer Mary Fisher and a new life at Mary’s cliffside seaside estate. Ruth has the fate of taking the children, moving to a council flat and quietly struggling as a single mother looming in her near future.
But Bobbo and Mary’s perfect new life together crumbles. The happy couple is burdened with Nicola and Andy and then Mary’s elderly mother. Bobbo’s business comes crashing down thanks to a fraud investigation. Mary’s books lose their glitter and her sales plummet. Bobbo goes to jail and Mary Fisher goes from a glamorous blond sprite to an ordinary woman worried by the house, bills and losing her man.
And what’s the force behind all the misfortune? Ruth, spiritually re-born as a She-Devil, who in a series of carefully planned and cunning (am I the only one who heard “cunning” in Blackadder’s voice? Okay…just me then…) moves destroys Bobbo and Mary as she changes her life to suit her new nature.
With each new identity (Vesta Rose, Polly Patch, Molly Wishant, Marlene Hunter) Ruth sheds more of her old self and body until she achieves her ultimate goal: to have everything belonging to Mary Fisher’s right down to her house, lovers, career and very body.
How many Danielle Steel heroines are willing to commit arson, fraud, tax evasion, money laundering and endure medical techniques that have the cutting edge of just in the range of the possible to achieve their ends?
Definitely snap up The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil. And if you ever run across the 1986 BBC adaption with Patricia Hodge and Julie T. Wallace…you are in for a treat!
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